


our lives are stories (waiting to be told)

by lady_ragnell



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, The Twelve Huntsmen (Fairy Tale)
Genre: F/F, Kings & Queens, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 14:57:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10856349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Queen Gudrun receives a message telling her she isn't to be married after all, and she's certainly glad about that, but she's more interested in the messenger.





	our lives are stories (waiting to be told)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Our lives are stories (waiting to be told)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13276803) by [archeoptah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/archeoptah/pseuds/archeoptah)



> **Sumi** , I love this tale very much and liked the thought of your prompt about the Rejected Bride being glad to be rejected because she never wanted the marriage in the first place, and then I wanted to give her a huntswoman to play off of, so this came out!
> 
> Title from "Sinners" by Lauren Aquilina.

_You can stay in your home; there will be no wedding. A man who has found an old key for his home doesn't need a new one to get in._

It's a brutal, unkind rejection. Or, more likely, remembering Kaspar from when they were young and their fathers were discussing the marriage, just a frank and unthinking one. Either way, it's grounds for war.

Gudrun's lips curve into a helpless smile.

“Your Majesty?” says her poor chief minister, who no doubt read the message before passing it soberly into her hands. She can't blame him for reading her private correspondence, but she's a little annoyed to have to assuage his worry when she'd rather revel in her joy.

Still, she's a queen. She straightens her shoulders and gives him a nod. “I'd like to speak to the messenger, please. I believe there's more to the situation than King Kaspar could trust to a letter. No doubt he sent someone he trusted.”

“The messenger is ...” A weighty pause. Josef always does try to look impressive. “Very odd, your Majesty.”

“It's not the lion, is it?” Gudrun remembers that lion, met it when she was a child. Its eyes were unnerving, and she had screaming nightmares about it more than once. Her father always told her that an adviser who always told the truth could be as much a curse as a blessing.

Josef shudders a little. “She's not. But I'm not certain if you should—”

“She? Who did Kaspar send me?” Gudrun asks, bemused, and shakes her head when it looks like Josef might actually try to answer her. “No, send her in and leave us be. I'll have the truth of what all of this is about if I have anything to say about it.”

*

It takes a good twenty minutes for the door to Gudrun's study to creak open again, just a crack at first until she calls for whoever it is to come in. Josef presents himself and steps aside for a woman who walks in behind him with her shoulders square and her chin up, ready for a fight. It makes Gudrun like her immediately, and colors the rest of the impression she has of her as she looks this messenger over.

She's tall, taller than Josef certainly and solid with it, wearing breeches and a leather jerkin that make her look like some kind of woodsman, though the cut is fine enough to make her even more of a mystery. Her light hair is short, and her gaze is sharp, and there's a fine necklace at her throat that seems out of place with the rest of the picture. “Your Majesty,” she says, and gives a deep bow.

“Josef, leave us,” says Gudrun, and he's learned by now not to object too loudly. He shuts the door with himself on one side of it and Gudrun and the messenger on the other, and if he grumbles and eavesdrops, at least he knows to be circumspect with both. Gudrun considers her visitor, who stands with her hands locked behind her back. “Tell me, does Kaspar know he was unforgivably insulting?”

Her face spasms briefly, and Gudrun has to glance down at her desk to keep from grinning. A giddy desire to laugh over a broken engagement isn't seemly. When she looks up, though, the messenger has relaxed a little, like she can tell Gudrun isn't about to make an example of her to show Kaspar what she does to oath-breakers. Her voice, when she speaks, is incongruously light and musical. “I think, your Majesty, that he was too in love to think about it. As the message might imply, he's married now.”

“And who are you, that he would send you to me with this news?”

“Dressed like this, you mean?” There's real humor there in her eyes that most don't dare show to a queen, and Gudrun is glad for the instant kinship of two people who find the same things ridiculous. “I'm a handmaiden of the new queen, though for a while I was one of the king's huntsmen. He wasn't quite sure what to do with us once he found out we were handmaidens after all, but it was decided that I was a suitable messenger.”

“You aren't dressed as a handmaiden.” Other than her fine necklace, which makes sense if she's intimate with Kaspar's new queen, and if she wants to make her status clear while continuing to dress as she chooses.

“It's easier to travel this way.” She shrugs. “And I got used to the clothes.”

“I suppose one would.” Gudrun leans back in her chair. “What's your name?”

“Agnes, your Majesty.” No title, no adornment. Perhaps even Agnes isn't sure what her title is, with such a confused history.

“I'd be very interested to hear the story of why my betrothed broke off our engagement so close to the wedding, and with no pretense to diplomacy at all, and what you have to do with it.”

*

The story Agnes spins her takes most of an afternoon, a tale as romantic and ridiculous as any traveling minstrel could wish to make a song out of.

Kaspar, the poor man, comes out of it looking the fool. Agnes speaks fairly, talks of how hard they all tried to disguise themselves, those who couldn't lower their voices avoiding speaking in company, giggling and learning to walk right in barracks at night. She talks of how one of her fellow handmaidens, who had been an apprentice weaver before a princess asked for eleven women built as tall and strong as she to pretend to be huntsmen, nearly cried when she had to pass a finely made spinning wheel over without even looking at it for the sake of a ruse. She talks of how another is quite pleased to be called Rudolf forever, and has been adopted by the rest of Kaspar's huntsmen.

She talks of all eleven of them, bemused but willing to do their princess a service when she was clearly nearly mad with grief over the loss of a prince she'd loved, how a noblewoman would happily sleep beside a charcoal burner's daughter in her name, and how all of them left the disguise behind as close as siblings.

“Well, Kaspar may be a fool and lucky that I'm forgiving, but at least he has a clever wife now.”

“I think he would have had one either way, your Majesty.”

Gudrun laughs. “Cleverness is always most useful in service of someone the clever one loves. Kaspar wouldn't have had much use out of me, I fear.” Agnes has her head tilted, waiting, smiling a little, and Gudrun feels satisfied, like the story has somehow been a game, and both of them have come out of it winners.

“I would say,” Agnes says at last, “that it's not a queen's job to be of use to anyone.”

“You're clever,” Gudrun says, and lets that stand between them.

*

She calls Agnes to dine with her that night. Company doesn't vary much, in Gudrun's keep, and Josef looks as though it pains him to see a lady messenger in a huntsman's jerkin at his queen's left hand, but he knows how much she craves variety. It was the only thing about marriage to Kaspar that she would have enjoyed, the changes that having to rule two countries would require.

“You didn't pack a dress,” Gudrun observes.

Agnes shrugs. She's eating her meal as daintily as any lady might. “I didn't think I'd be called to dinner.”

“We don't often get news from other lands, and you're a queen's trusted handmaiden. Of course I'd invite you for dinner.” Gudrun smiles. “It's selfish. You told me the story of how my marriage ended before it began, but you didn't tell me about yourself.”

Gudrun would have bet before that there wasn't a drop of shyness in Agnes, but she stumbles speaking about herself, and Gudrun listens to every word, learns Agnes's history, since she's unsure of her future.

She would have invited any guest, any messenger, to share her table. That it's Agnes she finds herself hosting, both of them giggling as Agnes tells stories of growing up a merchant's daughter and finding her life suddenly changed, is more luck than she could have asked for.

*

The next day, Gudrun sits at her desk, and after thinking for a while, she writes out a short message. Josef offers to see to its disposal, but Gudrun summons Agnes to her instead.

“Your Majesty?” Agnes asks.

“A message for your king and queen,” Gudrun says, handing a sealed envelope over for Agnes to tuck in her jerkin, to carry safe until she arrives back home. “You may take it to them as soon as you feel you've rested sufficiently from your journey.”

Agnes frowns before she nods, but she doesn't comment. It's almost disappointing, but Gudrun knew what to expect, and after a moment, it comes, just what she'd planned for. “Is there anything else you'd like me to pass on, your Majesty?”

“Tell Kaspar,” Gudrun says, “that I'll be awaiting his reply.”

Agnes is clever. She smiles.


End file.
